Give it up for Aaron!

…or Erin, depending on your preference. The Penn Bookstore was one of two sites for the first recorded “flash mob” in Philly on Sept. 5, when about 200 people showed up at exactly 5:33 p.m. and began cheering and applauding someone named “Aaron Beige.” Then, after a mass hug and more cheering, the mob dispersed as quickly as it materialized. Who was this person? “There’s a little bit of Aaron in all of us,” said one of the anonymous organizers. A similar mob hit Borders Books in Center City at the same time.

Penn Current Express

Quoted Recently

“As we know from the research, the performance of a large firm is due primarily to things outside the control of the top executive. … We call that luck. Executives freely admit this—when they encounter bad luck.”

—J. Scott Armstrong, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School, on how executives can influence a company’s value. Limited research on the topic has mostly found that broader market forces often have a bigger impact on a company’s success than an executive’s actions. (The New York Times, Feb. 7, 2015)